Equally Pointless Comparisons by Richaundra Thursday

The universe is mostly empty, I tell the students,
Even though we see thousands of stars
Each star with its own family:
Planets, moons, cosmic leftovers;
The density is like three watermelons
Scattered in the Sun,
But they don’t fathom the Sun’s girth;
It is function, not size they associate.
Three watermelons to the Sun,
The Sun fits thirty Earths
But even Earth is too big to grasp
When the world is made of
A braid of streets connecting home, schools, foods.
I don’t say:
It’s farther away than you feel mortality,
Emptier than the silence your parents share
Before dad disappears for the evening
And mom starts cleaning the kitchen
For the fourth time that day.
It takes longer to travel between stars
Than now to the end of the school day
Till summer
Till Christmas.
Vaster than a grandma’s love,
Than loneliness,
Hollower than disappointment,
Than strained metaphors.

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